Posted in Whathaveyou on July 24th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
This should be a good night in Grand Rapids. It’s been a minute since I was last in Michigan, but I recall the clarity and coolness of the Fall nighttime air, and I’ve been to the Pyramid Scheme, which is a rad spot. With the Heavy Temple and Crystal Spiders tour rolling through and Leather Lung on the road as well following their spot at In the Key of Doom in Brooklyn, Grand Rapids Doomfest III is set up to roll out heavy as LungBurner and Messiahvore complete the bill for the night-proper while Busby Death Chair, Warhand and Chokesetter are lined up for the pre-party the night before for a warmup.
As shows go, it’s kind of a no-brainer if you’re in the area or want to be. Heavy Temple fit nicely in that headliner spot and always tear it up regardless of when they’re playing. LungBurner have the longest commute, and I’m not sure if they’ll be touring either, but the Atlanta four-piece don’t seem opposed to travel since they’ll also be at HUFR Fest II next May in Denver. That’s one to note because Grand Rapids Doomfest III curator Jason Doome and HUFR Fest‘s Sean and Andrea Brooks recently announced their new label project, Space Goat Records (first release info here). See how it all ties together? See the underground thriving as the mainstream withers? I know you do.
What follows isn’t new-today news, but it hasn’t been posted here yet, so it’s new to me. Have at it:
What’s up everyone?! Just want to remind you that in four short months Grand Rapids Doomfest III takes over the Pyramid Scheme in downtown Grand Rapids Michigan on Saturday October 10th!
I worked hard to bring you the best that the Heavy Underground has to offer from across the US starting with Messiahvore from Colorado, LungBurner from Hotlanta, CRYSTAL SPIDERS 🕷️ from North Carolina, Leather Lung from Boston and of course Heavy Temple from Pennsylvania!
Visual Effects by Super Nuclear ☢️ So come on down and get your Doom on and your face melted!
Don’t forget about the free pre party featuring three alumni from Doomfest I! Warhand, Chokesetter and of course Busby Death Chair! See ya there!
Posted in Whathaveyou on June 10th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
By all accounts that I saw or heard, the inaugural HUFR Fest — taking its acronym from the ‘Heavy Underground Farm Report,’ and definitely aware that you pronounce it “huffer” — was a rousing success this past April. In 2027, HUFR Fest II will move to May and keep the same venue at Bar 404, and ahead of launching ticket presales, fest organizers Sean and Andrea Brooks and the esteemed Zeth Padulla (also drums in Luna Sol) have unveiled the first seven of the total 17 bands who’ll play over the course of the three days, May 14-16.
As one would expect, it’s a pretty sweet and curated selection, with Florist, Crop, HolyRoller, LungBurner, Phantom Hound, Formula 400 and Valomierda as the initial confirmations, representing a range of niches here and there under the umbrella of heavy rock. Two of the remaining 10 bands to be announced will apparently be international, so I’m curious to see how that manifests, but obviously as we’re 11 months out from next May, we’ve got time for such things.
Next we hear from HUFR Fest will be the opening of ticket sales, so keep an eye if they’re doing early-bird discounts or somesuch. In the meantime, you can get a sense of some of the fest’s ambition in the press release below — that part about growing “into one of North America’s premier gatherings for doom, stoner rock, sludge, heavy psych, and riff-driven music” — and check out the full announcement, which came down the PR wire:
HUFR FEST MILE HIGH RIFFS II “THE SECOND HUFF” RETURNS TO DENVER MAY 14-16, 2027
Three Days • Seventeen Bands • Infinite Riffs
First Wave of Bands Announced for the Second Annual Celebration of the Heavy Underground
HUFR FEST Mile High Riffs officially unveils the first seven bands confirmed for HUFR FEST Mile High Riffs II: The Second Huff, returning to Bar 404 in Denver, Colorado, May 14–16, 2027.
Following the overwhelming success of the inaugural festival, organizers are proud to launch the first phase of the 2027 lineup and begin building momentum toward another unforgettable weekend of heavy music in the Region of Doom.
The following artists comprise the first wave of bands announced on June 8, 2026, with additional national and international acts to be revealed in the coming months:
• Florist – Tampa, Florida • HolyRoller – Winston-Salem, North Carolina • LungBurner – Atlanta, Georgia • Crop – Lexington, Kentucky • Formula 400 – San Diego, California • Phantom Hound – Oakland, California • Valiomierda – Denver, Colorado
The inaugural HUFR FEST exceeded expectations, drawing fans and artists from across the United States for three unforgettable days of heavy music, community, and camaraderie. The response from attendees, bands, vendors, and media partners confirmed that HUFR FEST fills an important role in supporting and celebrating the modern heavy underground.
The founders credit the festival’s success to the collaborative spirit that exists throughout the heavy underground. That same spirit will continue to guide HUFR FEST as it grows into one of North America’s premier gatherings for doom, stoner rock, sludge, heavy psych, and riff-driven music.
The festival’s home, Bar 404, has quickly become one of Denver’s most respected destinations for live music. Its unique layout creates an intimate connection between artists and fans, allowing attendees to experience every crushing riff, soaring lead, and thunderous groove from just feet away. Combined with a powerful sound system and acoustics that consistently earn praise from musicians and concertgoers alike, Bar 404 is the perfect home for HUFR FEST.
Additional bands will be announced throughout the coming months. Organizers have confirmed that the next lineup announcement will include two international artists, further expanding the festival’s global reach and strengthening its reputation as a destination event for underground heavy music fans.
Alongside the next artist announcement, HUFR FEST will launch a limited number of Early Bird Presale Tickets at special introductory pricing. Fans are encouraged to follow festival channels closely, as these discounted passes will be available in limited quantities and are expected to move quickly.
More artist announcements, ticket information, sponsorship opportunities, vendor opportunities, and festival updates will be released in the coming months.
Founded by Sean Brooks, Andrea Thomas-Brooks, and Zeth Pedulla, HUFR FEST Mile High Riffs celebrates the best in doom, stoner rock, sludge, heavy psych, and underground heavy music. Presented in partnership with The Heavy Underground Farm Report, the festival brings together artists and fans from across the globe for a weekend dedicated to community, discovery, and massive riffs.
HUFR FEST Mile High Riffs II: The Second Huff May 14–16, 2027 Bar 404 Denver, Colorado
For festival updates, artist announcements, and future ticket information, visithufrfest.com.
Posted in Reviews on October 18th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
So this is it for the second of two Quarterly Review weeks around here, bringing the total to 100 releases covered since last Monday, with 10 more still to come next Monday.
110 releases, mostly (not all) from about April through November.
That’s insane. More, I’m not in any way prepared to call it or any other Quarterly Review comprehensive. It’s nowhere near everything that’s come out or is coming out. It’s a fraction at best. There’s just so much.
I’m not going to attach a value judgment to that. It’s not good, it’s not bad; it simply is. My processes remain largely unchanged, and whether it’s a net positive that the underground is either sparse and fractured or flooded with bands to such a point that Gen-X reunions underwhelm in the face of so much good, new music being made, I’ll be here regardless. And even if there were a fifth as many bands out there as there are right now, no doubt I still couldn’t keep up.
See you Monday.
Quarterly Review #91-100:
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Elder, Live at BBC Maida Vale Studios
While it’s by no means Elder‘s first captured-live release, as they’ve put out festival sets from Roadburn and Sonic Whip in years past, Live at BBC Maida Vale Studios answers any what’s-all-this-about questions with the sound of the performances themselves. It’s a single LP, somewhere about 40 minutes long, and in Elder terms that translates to three songs — “Merged in Dreams/Ne Plus Ultra” (15:33), “Lore” (13:54) and “Thousand Hands” (9:21) — so by no means is it expansive, or comprehensive in representing this era of Elder‘s presence on stage or scope in songwriting. Why put it out instead of some recorded tour night or a compilation of songs from different shows? Same answer as before: the sound of the performances. For sure Live at BBC Maida Vale Studios is a fan-piece, but it is live, and Elder sound fantastic — and it’s probably a pretty decent memory for the band to celebrate — so you’re not at all going to hear me argue.
Simon Price, now formerly of UK heavy psych forebears The Heads, returns with the first Kandodo outing since 2019’s K3 (review here) and a reoriented focus on intimacy rather than operating in a full-band style. That is to say, the five-track/44-minute release sounds like the solo album it is. That, however, doesn’t stop “Fuzzyoceans” from casting an expanse in its just-under-11 minutes, with a central rhythmic bounce around which layers of synth and guitar conjure a wash of experimentalist flourish. Lo-fi beatmaking starts in “Chamba7,” the opener, and sounds higher budget as “Theendisinpsych Pt. 1” borders on psych techno — “Theendisinpsych Pt. 2” follows immediately and moves from sustained keyboard notes and a sampled David Bowie radio interview to an evocative, shimmering drone; it isn’t arhythmic, but it doens’t have a ‘beat’ per se — and becomes part of the avant garde soundscape (the lightning part) in closer “Freefalling,” which unfolds in stages of variable volume and hum with some howling leads snuck in near the end. It’s a deep dive and at times a challenging listen. So yes, exactly what one would hope.
When High Reeper‘s third LP, Renewed by Death, was announced back in July, it was notable how much the album’s narrative seemed to position them as a metal band rather than heavy/doom rock, which even though 2019’s Higher Reeper (review here) had its harder-hitting moments, is kind of how I’d come to think of them. The eight songs of Renewed by Death aren’t hyper-aggressive — though you wouldn’t call “Torn from Within” ‘chill’ by any means — but they feel sharper in their composition than the last record, and if High Reeper want to say that “Lamentations of the Pale” and “Jaws of Darkness” are their take on doom metal, I’d only emphasize how much that take feels like High Reeper‘s own in being cognizant of the traditional metal and doom aspects of their sound and making them groove as fervently as they do. The Eastern Seaboard is lucky to have them.
A low-key highlight of 2024, the collaboration between Norwegian neofolkers Ævestaden and heavy progressive instrumentalists Kanaan — titled Langt, Langt Vekk and comprising nine songs of varied intent, arrangement and origin — resounds with creative depth. It’s in Norwegian, and plays a lot off of traditional folk instrumentation and vocal styles — not to mention the songs themselves, which are also traditionals — but as the two sides come together even just on a three-minute instrumental piece like “Fiskaren,” there’s an organic forested space rock to be found, and whether it’s the somehow-catchy “Farvel” or “Habbor og Signe,” the cosmic-leaning “Vallåt efter C.G. Färje” or the wistful progeadelia that resolves in “Vardtjenn,” the reverence for the material is palpable, and also the reverence for the process itself, for each of these two entities contributing to something grander than either might be able or inclined to conjure on their own. That the collection worked out to be gorgeous, both worldly and otherworldly, and to cast such a breadth while remaining cohesive in mood is a credit to all involved. It could’ve been an absolute mess. It very much is not.
Slugs are Legal Now contains two live sets from experimental doomers MC MYASNOI, one from Harpa and one from R6013, both venues in the band’s hometown of Reykjavík, Iceland. The setlists are identical at six-per, but the performances are varied in a way that becomes part of the personality of the whole, which is immersive in its droning stretches, sometimes harsher in the noise being made particularly on the rougher R6013 songs, but still able to be heavy in a piece like “Step on Ur Neck” in a way that feels conversant with the likes of Ufomammut or Boris, and neither the moody post-darkjazz of “Nytrogen” nor the drums-and-rumble-do-a-minute-or-two-of-free-psych “lea%rdi%rdx2%rcx” a short time later (watch out for your speakers with that one), do anything to dissuade that impression. “Terror Serpentine” finishes both halves of Slugs are Legal Now with 11 minutes of grim sprawl, and in the culmination, that it’s the keyboard that’s shredding instead of one or the other of the guitars feels suitable to the weirdo nuance MC MYASNOI seem to come by so naturally and pair with a progressive will to grow by screwing with convention. Not going to be for everybody, but those ready to take a risk might find the reward waiting.
Back after two years with further affirmation of their comfort with the EP format, Connecticut two-piece Turkey Vulture run a condensed gamut in the six songs and 12 minutes of On the List, with the duo of vocalist/guitarist/bassist Jessie May and drummer/backing vocalist Jim Clegg giving specifically Misfits-y early punk impressions on “Fiends Like Us,” which “Untitled” takes more of a garage angle on in following before they metal-up for “Dollhouse” and the 48-second grind-punker “Adults Destroy,” which leads to thrashing in “Harvest Moon” offset by doomly swing, and the closing “Jill the Ripper,” going out on a note that toys with goth Americana in the vein of The Bad Seeds and boasts banjo, guitar, percussion and, crucially, accordion from Steve Rodgers in a multifaceted guest spot. The accordion makes it. Turkey Vulture‘s output is generally pretty raw and that’s true with On the List as well, but there’s character in them coinciding with the flow from one aspect of their sound to the next between the songs, and the EP ends up conveying a lot about what works in the band for something that’s 12 minutes long.
Doubly-bassed Brussels longform doom explorers Ghost:Whale certainly don’t get any less consciousness melting on the second disc of Dive:Two, which manifests its plunge across three extended pieces each given the title “Dub:Whale” and assigned a Roman numeral, but by then the five songs of the album’s first 67 minutes (as opposed to the 57 of the concluding trilogy) have already passed in the hypnotic, cosmic-doom push of “Under Pressure” and the synth-laced chug nod in the second half of “Les Danses des Sorcieres” that seems to come to a head in the speedier “Ultimas Palabras.” The shortest inclusion at nine minutes and by its finish spending some time cruising around a Truckfightersian desert, “Ultimas Palabras” gives over to “Godzilla” and “Eye of the Storm,” a kind of second LP within the first CD, led into by the synth of “Godzilla” — not a cover — and arriving at the farthest reach in the electronics-infused expanses of “Eye of the Storm,” for which the drums mostly sit out and the noise spends 21 minutes venturing into the unknown. Ghost:Whale are not fucking around. And obviously the “Dub:Whale” tracks are a divergence in intention, harnessing the power of repetition in a different way, but either it’s a logical extension or my brain has just gone numb from the low-end. Fine in any case, honestly.
Do I really need to tell you these guys are up to some shenanigans? They called the band Sheepfucker and Kraut, for crying out loud. Heavy rock chicanery ensues over eight tracks rife with willful misbehavior, culminating with “Broner” after turning the album’s progression into a kind of playground running between heavy rock, classic and psychedelic instrumentalism, metal and jams. It’s not a little, and I guess a namedrop for Mr. Bungle is somewhat obligatory, but the Bulgarian outfit make themselves welcome in the swath of ground they cover, punkish in their glee on top of everything else in “Bobanei” and the pop-adjacent “Look at Me,” which would seem to have some satire behind its chorus but is a standout hook just the same. They’re not all nonsense, or at least not at the expense of their songwriting in “Rich Man” and “Jolly Roger,” or “Did You Know” mirroring “Look at Me” in the penultimate spot on side B, but if people having fun while making music is a problem for you, I mean, really, you might want to have a good long think on what that’s all about. Yeah, it’s over-the-top. That’s the idea.
In some ways, LungBurner‘s second LP of 2024, Natura Duale, reminds of earliest Yatra in bringing together vicious sludge metal and a breadth of atmosphere, but the Atlanta outfit have more of a post-metallic bent as the solo of “Barren” nonetheless dares to soar, and opener/longest track (immediate points) “Requiem” establishes the first of the album’s nods in a build of standalone guitar in the spirit of YOB, and in combination with a churn that wouldn’t feel out of place on Neurot and a crush in centerpiece “(Prey) Job” that opens to a classic stoner metal swagger in its verse, the righteousness here takes many forms, most of them dark, grueling and heavy — this definitely applies to the Celtic Frosting put on the proceedings by the finale “Astral Projection” — but not without a corresponding reach or purpose. LungBurner are served by the complexity of character, and Natura Duale grows more vivid as it goes.
With their material steeped in fantasy and horror/sci-fi lore, a goodly portion of it being of their own making, Michigan’s Bog Wizard continue to find the thread between tabletop gaming and sometimes monolithic sludge. The bulk of Journey Through the Dying Lands, which is their second release in a row done in collaboration with a game company, is dedicated to opener “I, Mycelium,” which stretches across 19:50 and unfolds in stages that don’t bother to choose between being brutal or fluid, the band winding up coming across as dug-in as one might expect Bog Wizard to be in the endeavor. There are two more studio tracks, in “Dodz Bringare,” which is black metal until it slams into the doom wall, and “Hagfish Dinner,” on which they depart for two minutes of harmonized chant-like vocals over resonant acoustic guitar. They’re not done yet as Ben Lombard (guitar/vocals), bassist Colby Lowman and drummer/vocalist Harlen Linke offer a glimpse at some live-on-stage banter before tearing into the thrasher “Stuck in the Muck” and backing it with another live track, this one a take on “Barbaria” from 2021’s Miasmic Purple Smoke (review here) that by the time it builds to its galloping finish has already long since demanded every bit of volume you can give it.
